Friday, 9 September 2016

‘BLAME KING FOR PROBLEMS’- DUBE

The recent criticism of the
Swazi government from many Swazis is misplaced. They should be blaming the
country’s absolute monarch, who recently assumed the chairmanship of SADC, says
exiled political activist Sonkhe Dube, writes Kenworthy News Media.

How can there be democracy
in Swaziland, when parliament treats the country’s absolute monarch King Mswati
III as a god and when the whole cabinet and several member of parliament are
elected by the King? And why do Swazis blame parliament for the country’s ills,
when Mswati clearly has the last say on everything?

These are questions that
Sonkhe Dube, the International Secretary of the banned Swaziland Youth Congress
(SWAYOCO), says he keeps asking himself about his native Swaziland, a country
where two thirds of the population languishes in poverty and where political
parties are in effect banned and their members harassed.

And a country that Sonkhe
fled for fear of being arrested and tortured by the police, as he has been on
several occasions because of his fight for democracy and social justice.

Blaming powerless
parliament is misguided
“The Swazi population came out guns blazing against the government at the
Sibaya Forum [a People’s Parliament where Swaziland’s absolute monarch summons
his subjects to the royal cattle byre to discuss pressing issues]. But the
repeated calls for the axing of the Prime Minister and his government were
misplaced. Parliament in reality have to serve the hand that appointed them
before they serve the people, so removing the government is like cutting tree
branches and hoping that the tree will be uprooted,” says Sonkhe Dube.

He believes that his fellow
Swazis fear the monarch too much to dare criticize him in public. According to
international NGO’s such as Freedom House and Amnesty International these fears
are certainly not unfounded.

According to Freedom
House, who speak of Swaziland as a country where “elected members of
parliament have no oversight or influence over setting government policy,
making laws, or adjusting spending levels,” the population of Swaziland is one
of the populations in the world with least political freedom. Amnesty
International describes how “repressive legislation” and “politically
motivated trials and laws that violate the principle of legality … continues to
be used to suppress dissent.”

Tell the King the truth
But Sonkhe Dube nevertheless believes that Swazis must confront the true root
cause of their woes if they are to transform Swaziland from an absolute
monarchy that benefits few to a democracy. After all, over half the Swazi
population highly disapproves of the current form of government and less
than a fifth believe their country to be fully democratic according to opinion
polls from Afrobarometer.

“The king should be told
the honest truth about the chaos caused by his absolute power without fear or
favour. A person with a rash caused by a certain blood disease cannot stop the
rash with an ointment, without taking care of the disease in the blood.”

Sonkhe Dube is
a teacher by profession. He is the International Secretary of the Swaziland
Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), and is currently living in exile in neighbouring
South Africa due to his pro-democracy activism and affiliation to SWAYOCO. He
has been arrested, detained and tortured on several occasions by King Mswati’s
police. He cannot go back to Swaziland, he says, because he fears the response
of the brutal Swazi police.